The company we keep
by unnafraher
Summary: An album of connected moments, interspersed with the evidence of something shared. ( collection of one-shots )


1.

Johan has never thought of himself as irascible, and that's one of the reasons why his guilt plagues him so, burning now only a degree lower than his fever.

_39__ C _the little digital window in his white thermometer displays for him. The beeping is the same five mono-note pips he gets every time he uses it. At least it's consistent. Whether his temperature is thirty-six or thirty-nine centigrade, the thermometer delivers the numbers, the message, with the same indifference. A regular miracle of the modern era.

He would sigh if he wasn't already feeling so faint. His concentration is fractured; try as he might to gather his facilities to him, they keep scattering like so many feverish birds caught between un-gloved, untrained hands. A wave of heat roils through him, breaking over his consternation. He trembles.

He breathes again, and he finds that he's braced against the sink, his fingers clasped around smooth edges of cool, dry porcelain. He looks up into the mirror at himself. Rivulets of sweat are running down from his matted hair and over his face. One is diverting into the groove by his left nostril; on the ridge of his upper-lip he tastes salt. He holds a hand to his throat, opens his mouth, looks at it as though he might see through the skin and glimpse the fire he feels there. His eyes, when he focusses on them, are half-lidded. Milky.

What had he been annoyed about before? He tries to recollect it. At himself, perhaps how he got sick? What about those damned old red stools he tripped against, that he still hasn't gotten rid of after, what, five years and how many spills on them?

No—it was his family that he was annoyed at. His family. Something about them being too loud, bickering too much about whose fault it was that Johan was sick, that he still hadn't gone to the hospital after two days, them being actively banished from the realm of his already simmering mind if they wouldn't _stop_.

He checks, and they aren't there. Rainbow Dragon he can feel vaguely, staunch as ever_, _at what must be the very edge of his mind, so far out there that Johan has to exert himself so much, to extent himself so far, and he must push himself so because he feels so _guilty_, this just to sense the presence, that he physically loses his balance.

He catches himself against the sink once more. The thermometer clatters to the floor and out of his range of consciousness.

After several moments of white searing along his spine and bunching behind his eyes, he's able to fiddle with the tap until there's water running into the basin of the sink. He splashes some lukewarm water on his face. Turns the water off. He runs his hands over his face and up through his hair to spread the liquid relief around his scalp. His eyes are closed, his mind is pulsating behind his eyelids to a beat he cannot recall at the moment.

Now quiescent, he shambles back to his bedroom. He flops down on his bed with the sheets already pulled back and messed from before, but these are the only signs of _where_ he lay before, for the bedding has become mercifully chill and comfortable in his absence. It occurs to him that he must have been up—walking, standing, sitting—for at least twenty minutes. And that is the last coherent though he has for a while as he lays there, on his stomach, asleep.

.

When he awakens, he wants immediately to go back to sleep. So the fever in his limbs jerks him awake. His attention is tugged everywhere at once where he's burning _and _aching. He's dehydrated, he realises, and severely so.

He'd moan if his throat weren't so ravaged.

That's when he realises he isn't alone, either. Not just that Rainbow Dragon is there, or that is family is back—which they aren't; he checks—but someone is there, physically, in the room with him.

Standing in the doorway.

"Johan," Juudai says.

Johan rolls onto his back. Then, dizzily, he turns his head to face his friend. His red-adorned friend. They are both red-adorned now, he thinks. Then he laughs, and he's too amused to realise that he's edging on becoming delirious.

"Oi, Johan," Juudai begins, and then continues in rapid-fire Japanese Johan can neither process or keep up with. He waits for cues instead.

Johan smiles and nods at Juudai and is confident that he's figured the right timing. He has forgotten his condition for a moment, and he tries to say something. So his throat flares. There's a desert storm down there, a whipped up sand-paper explosion of phlegm stands and painful dryness.

In the time it takes the storm to settle, Juudai has moved. He's at the side of Johan's bed. Something cold, something external to the blaze within him, touches Johan's face. He starts, and Juudai vanishes from his vision. Even from his periphery. Johan has some odd-shaped thoughts about hallucinating Juudai as an extension of the colour red. He's wondering if shellfish bleed red when Juudai returns.

His friend seems to hesitate. Then he touches Johan again. This time he places a moistened cloth on Johan's forehead. And then strokes soaked bangs sagging against the sides of his face, and this gesture shoots sparks of shivers throughout all of his body, and it feels like mercy.

Though the warmth begins to gather once more.

Juudai says something.

And something else.

A question.

Johan exhales. His eyes find Juudai's. They settle there—where it's so brown, so gently warm, _thank you_ Johan wants to say—before filming over. Things become blurry.

When Johan comes around again, he finds that he's more aware than before. Juudai must have put some water in him—that is his first thought. So his fever must have receded a bit. Also, he shifts, and he realises that he's been resettled. The blue sheets of his have been pulled up to his chest and smoothed out, though he is still wearing his cotton pyjamas that by now smell something like an old gym.

It's somewhere between six and eight in the evening, he guesses.

And here is Juudai coming into his room, sitting on the edge of his bed. Closer, now, than he has been in years. Glass of water in one hand, in the other he holds the black spiral notebook Johan uses as an address book. Juudai gives both of these things to his infirm friend.

"Can't talk, yeah?" Juudai asks. "Here, maybe these'll help. You can write what you want to say, and I'll read it."

Johan takes a sip of the water. Delighted by the ice that clinks against the glass, he takes one of the cubes into his mouth and crunches on it, puts the perspiring cup aside, and begins to write something with a pen taken from his night stand.

He shows what he's written.

_It's nice to see you again, Juudai. Have you been well? I am sorry that this is such a bad time to visit with me. Maybe next time call—better for the both of us?_

"Eh, I've been good. But what about you—what happened to you, Johan?" Juudai asks with a gesture at him.

Johan frowns. His brow setting with crinkles, he writes, _I went on a hike._ And, after a look at Juudai that's obviously an appeal to be understanding, please, he adds, _I was out too long, too late._

Juudai laughs at him. "And maybe you were too lost, yeah?"

Johan huffs indignantly, smacks Juudai in his temple with the notebook bent up the middle.

"Hey," Juudai exclaims. Still chuckling he holds his arms over his head as a guard. But Johan's next strike is not forthcoming. Instead he laughs soundlessly. _You know me so well, _he means to write. And then he flushes as the heat that has been building begins to thrum under his skin. A sheen pools in his pores.

Juuadi touches him, lightly, on the shoulder, and that side of his body explodes into a riot of febrile starbursts that tink against his already over-fired nerves.

"Is there anything I can do? Anything you need from me?" Johan hears Juudai ask as he closes his eyes and tries to will his muscles to relax. He can hear the new tinge of worry tightening his friend's words, a kind of serious, earnest concern that has been drawn out of him by Johan's condition. It's a little bit beyond what Juuadi would normally show, he thinks, he _feels_, and somehow this is important. Because there's something more there—here.

_Oh, how lucky I am,_ Johan thinks as the blackness and the neon colours and his concentration swirl before his eyes. Splotches like wavelets of ink pound against him. Then he opens his eyes and the smile he gives Juudai is radiant.

Johan scribbles, _Your hand_. Not with kanji, but with the easily flowing characters of hiragana. The request is simple and elegant and not fully what he wants, but what it broaches is close enough to make Johan feel like he's overheating.

Juudai reads the request with his head tilted sideways. His one eyebrow cocks. "My hand? He asks, holding it up between them with his fingers slightly spread in a most exquisite way.

_Yes, _Johan nods. _I want to hold it, _he thinks. He starts to write, simpers, stops. Starts again with the intent to not be too direct. Shows the message to Juudai, and then he faints because this is all too much, his nerves quail and crash—he is too embarrassed, he is too happy, he is too sick. The notebook is still clutched in his hands.

What he's written is, _Give me your hand that holds out hope._


End file.
